What difference do ministers make? This question has remained unresolved despite the voluminous literature on the political determinants of policy—most pertinently the role of parties—and the development in recent years of a significant body of work on ministers and their careers. Despina Alexiadou’s book, then, is situated at research frontiers in the study of government ministers and the political determinants of public policy in parliamentary democracies.
The central contribution of Ideologues, Partisans, and Loyalists is to address systematically the question of ministerial influence. Alexiadou argues that certain ministers matter for policy, while others do not. In making this case, she contributes to debates on ministerial government and party government, showing that ministers’ attributes contribute to an explanation of policy outputs, often to a greater extent than partisanship. The book also makes valuable contributions to the study of social welfare reform and the relationship between social democracy and employment policies.
The study proceeds in several steps: Chapter 2 sets out Alexiadou’s “theory of ministerial types” with the aid of a formal model; Chapter 3 describes the attributes of the ministers in 18 countries since the 1940s about whom she has collected data; Chapter 4 establishes that the selection of ministerial types is not simply driven by the preferences of party leaders, but is also a function of the constraints under which those leaders operate. The main analyses are presented in Chapter 5 on social welfare policy, in Chapter 6 on employment policies, and in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 on case studies drawn from Ireland, the Netherlands, and Greece.
Being expensive and politicized, social welfare and employment policies are, Alexiadou argues, a hard test of ministerial influence. Drawing on existing data sets, she measures social welfare policy outputs in terms of change in social welfare generosity from the 1970s on. The analyses of employment policy focuses on two areas: employment protection and spending on several types of active labor market policies (ALMPs): training, employment assistance, and direct job creation.
The “theory of ministerial types” posits three types of ministers, distinguishable by their preferences and capacities: ideologues, partisans, and loyalists. So-called ideologues prioritize policy seeking, whether or not they are senior party figures. The strong policy preferences that distinguish them from other ministers are identified operationally through their professional background: Ideologues in left-of-center parties are ministers with a professional background in trade unions. Left ideologues have more intense left-of-center preferences concerning social welfare. In employment policy, they are expected to protect labor market insiders, and they should also prefer ALMPs favored by unions, such as training, whereas nonideologues should support cheaper and more flexible job-creation measures. Ideologues from conservative and liberal parties are those with professional backgrounds in economics, banking, finance, or business; this is treated as a proxy for the intensity of their pro-market preferences, with implications for social welfare policy.
Nonideologue ministers are more centrist than their ideologue colleagues. However, nonideologues consist of two different ministerial types, which are distinguished from each other by their political seniority. Partisans are senior party figures, operationalized as party leaders, deputy leaders, those that are first or second in the party’s electoral list, or leaders of the party’s parliamentary group. They are assumed to be ambitious and skilled, and they prioritize vote seeking for their parties. They are dynamic ministers with the motivation and capacity to effect change. Finally, the typical minister is neither an ideologue nor a partisan; he or she is a party loyalist who prioritizes office seeking. With neither the motivation nor the capacity to effect policy change independently, the loyalist is a “safe pair of hands” (e.g., p. 19).
The provision of a rich, cross-national data set on employment and social affairs ministers is in itself a major achievement (“Replication data for Ideologues, Partisans and Loyalists: cabinet ministers and social welfare reform in parliamentary democracies” may be accessed at https://pureportal.strath.ac.uk/en/datasets/replication-data-for-ideologues-partisans-and-loyalists-cabinet-m). There is intriguing variation in those data. On the left, the proportion of ministers with a trade union background has fallen over time, while the proportion of loyalists has risen; on the right, the proportion of employment ministers with an “ideologue” professional background rose sharply from the 1990s, while the proportion of loyalists fell (pp. 45, 47); and ministers on the right have substantially more local political experience than those on the left (pp. 50-51).
Alexiadou’s central finding is that the typical minister (the loyalist) does not have an independent influence on policy, but that dynamic ministers (ideologues and partisans) often do. Curiously, despite lacking the political resource of seniority in most instances, policy-driven ideologues can be just as effective in changing social welfare policy as vote-seeking partisans; Alexiadou reasons that they can be “empowered” by their policy beliefs (p. 238). However, partisans’ effects are unconditional, while the effects of ideologues are conditioned by factors such as fiscal constraints or a strong finance minister. The effects of dynamic ministers are most evident in coalitions and minority cabinets, whereas in single party majority governments, even dynamic ministers mainly deliver the prime minister’s policy. Partisan effects are usually present, but the ministerial type typically has greater explanatory power than partisan control of the portfolio or the partisan composition of the cabinet.
The study’s findings on the relationship between social democrats and employment policy are intriguing. Senior and apparently centrist social democrats (partisans) holding the employment portfolio have driven increases in employment protection and spending on ALMPs, including training and employment assistance. However, leftist social democrats (ideologues) do not appear to influence employment protection (despite their strong preferences), and their influence on ALMP spending is even negative for their less preferred measures.
The case studies are a valuable and dense trove of historical detail based partly on interviews conducted by the author. They deepen the analysis, uncovering and illustrating processes by which ministers influence (or fail to influence) policy. They also provide evidence of the behavior expected of ministerial types, such as left ideologues acting as interlocutors with unions. They advance the study’s findings; for example, they show that partisans can make their mark before the government forms (p. 170). Descriptively, they illustrate the ministerial types. However, one of their most useful functions is to show how crude these types are and how ministers often defy neat classification. Among other things, they appear to show how the types may underestimate some loyalist ministers. These rich chapters also provide case-specific insights on multiple aspects of cabinet government: portfolio allocation, ministerial selection, incumbency advantages in coalition bargaining, and variation in the prestige of government ministries over time.
The book is not without its rough edges. Chapter 4 is a difficult read, not least because of a mismatch between Table 4.1 and the main text. The theoretical basis for distinguishing ideologues from others is considerably more developed for left ministers than those on the right (p. 41). The exemplification of Barry Desmond as an effective ideologue minister in Ireland may not give sufficient weight to evidence (presented in the book) that much of his influence came from his political seniority; he was arguably a hybrid partisan-ideologue.
For those studying government ministers or the political determinants of policy, Ideologues, Partisans, and Loyalists is a landmark contribution. It takes on a difficult question that few have addressed, and it points the way to a promising route forward in the study of ministers’ influence on policy, focusing on relatively narrow tranches of policy and using indicators of policy preferences tailored to those policies. More broadly, it is part of a growing body of research that is developing cross-nationally applicable indicators of politicians’ preferences. Studies of policy areas beyond social welfare and employment policies may fruitfully follow Alexiadou’s lead. Much like its more dynamic protagonists, this is a book that makes a difference.
